Lightning has always been a destructive force of nature. Causing death by electrocution and starting fires both in residential areas and in forests. In either case the loss of life and property is substantial. Lightning strikes have affected communication systems, and by uncontrolled arcing, electricity grids leading to loss of power with substantial economic loss
Lightning is the number one cause of forest and farm fires just in the United States and causes over 80 percent of all livestock losses due to accidents. Property losses run into billions of dollars annually and thousands of deaths and injury are reported yearly. Business losses from power and communications failure run into billions of dollars annually. Up to now, lightning strike damage has generally been controlled primarily by grounding.
A lightning discharge can have voltage of 10 MV to 100 MV and current of 1 kA to 300 kA. It packs so much voltage that it can leap a mile through the air and strike another object. Lightning can strike a building directly or leaping to it after striking a tree or other nearby object or by following a power line. It can strike any object that provides an easier path to the ground for it than the air. Because of the large network of lines, lightning can strike a utility pole at one point and be transmitted to any location in the network. Because of this, utility companies use multiple grounding and other protective devices per mile to ameliorate the lightning effects.
There has been a lot of activity in the alleviation of lightning damage but none in utilizing its energy potential.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,495,168 discloses a dipole lightning conductor which can gather electrical charges from the atmosphere during a thunderstorm, opposite to the polarity of the adjacent cloud on one side and induce a different polarity on the other end contacting the ground. When a sufficient potential difference is reached between the dipole and the earth, a dielectric breakdown occurs sending a large amount of earth charge to the thundercloud, inducing a thunderbolt.
In U.S. Pat. No. 6,012,330, Palmer discloses a method of inducing lightning strikes by shooting a stream of ionized water into a thundercloud and triggering electrical conduction through the ionized water column to the ground. In this invention, while ionized water is used, advantage is taken also of capillary wetting of conducting mesh cable at the tip of which is tethered a balloon of conductor coated Mylar. It is easier to float a balloon than to pump a column of water to any significant height.
In U.S. Pat. No. 6,320,119 Gumley discloses a capacitively coupled composite air terminal with sharp and rounded end components for voltage manipulation to minimize electric field ahead of streamers to minimize corona discharge.
Kato, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,280,335, discloses a compound lightning low voltage arrester with high energy tolerance for power and telephone lines comprising a spark gap is connected to a serial combination of Zinc Oxide arrestor and a non-inductive resistor. By cooperative execution between the spark gap and the Zinc Oxide arrester, the Zinc Oxide is chosen to be of a rating such that thermal breakdown does not occur before the spark gap ignition voltage is reached. The arrangement ensures reliable and predictable discharge and arrester survival even under multiple lightning strikes of close proximity.
Subbarao in U.S. Pat. No. 4,338,648, discloses a discharge counter and arrester current meter to determine arrester steady state current and the number of discharge events occurring during a thunder storm lightning arrester event.
Greenwald and Moses in U.S. Pat. No. 5,610,813 disclose a thunderstorm cell detection and mapping system for acquiring localized lightning strike information and identifying and locating active thunderstorm cells.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,272,720, a method of differentiating between cloud-cloud and cloud-ground discharges is disclosed. Indicating discharge events with no accompanying lightning ground strike. This indicates that even in the absence of streamers, there is significant electrical discharge that can be converted and stored.
Weir and Nelson disclose in U.S. Pat. No. 7,033,406, a high energy density ceramic capacitor with energy capacity of 52 kW·h in 2005 cu·in, the equivalent of 1600 kW·h/m3. Hansen in U.S. Pat. No. 6,078,494 discloses multilayer ceramic capacitors comprising doped barium-calcium-zirconium-titanate dielectric, the materials basis for U.S. Pat. No. 7,033,406. It is claimed to be characterized by high dielectric constant, high stability of capacitance value, long service life, low loss factor, high insulation resistance capacitance, low voltage dependence, and wide temperature range stability. Electrodes of base metal alloys from the group of Ni, Fe, Co or their alloys are claimed to be perhaps just as effective as noble metals containing gold, silver, platinum and palladium and may also contain Cr, Ti, Zr, V, Al, Zn, Cu, Sn, Pb, Mn, Mo and W.
Although the energy density capacity is not disclosed, it may be in the same range as U.S. Pat. No. 7,033,406 showing a path for storing the energy that can be extracted from lightning discharge.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,361,187, claims dielectric constant (k) of up to 19000 using similar group of dielectrics and processes. In U.S. Pat. No. 5,604,167 dielectric constant values of between 11,000 and 14,000 are disclosed by the same inventor with equivalent materials and processes.
Since these capacitors use standard powder processing technique, it can reasonably be expected that equivalent characteristics may be observed with naturally occurring doped silicates such as phyllosilicates for example, montmorillonite: (Na,Ca)0.33(Al,Mg)2(Si4O10)(OH)2.nH2O, or cyclosilicates such as Benitoite—BaTi(Si3O9) as base materials appropriately calcined and doped.
In U.S. Pat. No. 6,078,494 multilayer ceramic capacitors comprising doped barium-calcium-zirconium-titanate dielectric is disclosed. It is claimed to be characterized by high dielectric constant, high stability of capacitance value, long service life, low loss factor, high insulation resistance and low voltage dependence, and wide temperature range stability. Electrodes of base metal alloys from the group of Ni, Fe, Co or their alloys are claimed to be perhaps just as effective as noble metals containing gold, silver, platinum and palladium and may also contain Cr, Ti, Zr, V, Al, Zn, Cu, Sn, Pb, Mn, Mo and W. In U.S. Pat. No. 5,361,187, the inventors claim dielectric constants of up to 19000 using similar group of dielectrics and processes. In U.S. Pat. No. 5,604,167 dielectric constant values of between 11,000 and 14,000 is disclosed by the same inventors with equivalent materials and processes. Since these capacitors use standard powder processing technique, it can reasonably be expected that equivalent characteristics may be observed with naturally occurring doped silicates such as phyllosilicates for example, various grades of montmorillonite: (Na,Ca)0.33(Al,Mg)2(Si4O10)(OH)2.nH2O, or cyclosilicates such as Benitoite—BaTi(Si3O9) as base materials appropriately calcined and doped.
Although the technology to arrest lightning strikes has been around for at least a hundred years, this invention to harness and store that power has only become viable due to recent advances in super-capacitor technology which has made possible the fabrication of ultrahigh capacitance capacitors with very long lifetimes, high power, high energy densities and very fast charge and discharge rates.
Just as flood water, another destructive force of nature in times past was controlled by building dams, and from the dams eventually came hydroelectric power; and wind including thunderstorms has now been harnessed to generate electricity, this invention describes the technology to harness the power of atmospheric discharges including lightening storms to generate useable electrical energy.
This disclosure also introduces the concept of an Energy Dam. Facilities of substantial energy storage capacity capable of receiving energy feeds from various energy sources such as Solar, Wind, Thermal Power plants and Lightning. For example, during a thunderstorm, electricity generated by wind and lightning is collected and stored.
Lightning strikes every part of the globe but not uniformly. The regions with the highest historical concentration of lightning strikes are shown in FIG. 1c. These include Florida and the Gulf Coast in the Americas, the Equatorial Highlands of DRC, Rwanda and Burundi in Central Africa and the Monsoon Belt in Asia.
Except for the Americas, typically, these regions have very little electricity infrastructure. With the capability disclosed here, substantial reserves of electricity can be generated, stored and possibly traded.
In regions of epileptic electricity supply, disruptions in power do not necessarily translate into disruption in service. Since when power is generated, it is fed into these energy dams or local storage units for eventual use. Just as in water supply, the customer is not necessarily conscious of when the local water company is pumping water into storage tanks or local dams, in energy dams, the customer need not be conscious of whether or when electricity is being generated by the utility company because the power to his home is drawn not necessarily live from the grid but from the local energy storage units or energy dams.